Would it shock you to know that you have a virtual team? This may seem like a ridiculous question, but after learning a bit about the evolving nature of today’s workplace, more and more managers are answering, “Yes!”

It helps to understand just what makes a team virtual in the first place, starting with some of the following characteristics:

Do colleagues work more than 90 feet away from one another?

Does your team rely on communication technologies to accomplish specific goals?

Do you have frequent web or tele-conferences?

Does one or more colleague work remotely, with limited or even zero face time with the rest of the team?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then there is no doubt about it: you have a virtual team. This is important, because a virtual team is not the same as a face-to-face team.

Our image of a virtual team usually involves a small group of people dispersed across hundreds and hundreds of miles. While this is definitely one form of virtual team, it’s not the only model. What distinguishes a virtual team from a face-to-face one is how they communicate, which is usually a function of distance – 50 feet or more. That distance (or even located in the same office but on distance floor) acts as a psychological barrier for many people, causing them to avoid walking to a team member’s desk and rely on technology instead.

Thanks to a study by Tom Allen, we have an exact number for when that shift happens. Allen studied a team of engineers and found that if they worked in the next office over, they had a 25% chance of communicating once a week. If they were 30 feet apart or more, they had a 10% chance of communicating at least once a week. But, if they were more than 50 feet apart, the frequency of their communication dropped. Past 90 feet, it didn’t matter whether they were in the next building, or in China, they began to act like a virtual team.

Virtual teams are much more common than we think, existing in offices across the country and presenting a new set of problems that can’t be solved with face-to-face solutions. It is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole: a waste of time, money and resources.

If it seems that telecommuting, or virtual work, is more popular than ever, it’s not hard to see why: a new report from Global Workplace Analytics (GWA) and FlexJobs shows that it has grown by 115% in the past decade.

And it shows no signs of slowing. In fact, GWA also reports that 50% of the US workforce holds a job compatible with at least partial teleworking, and that 80 to 90% of the workforce would like to work remotely at least part-time.

Part of the reason stems from the fact that 80% of married millennials have a dual-income household that leaves little time for recreation – so any time gained by working from home is attractive. In fact, as millennials make up more of the workforce, employers are using flex work to attract top talent that might balk at the idea of having to go to an office every day of the week.

As more companies embrace virtual work, however, they discover that many of the benefits outlined by GWA fail to materialize, and that their teams exhibit a number of negative characteristics outlined in a Forbes report:

GWA Benefits of Virtual Teams

Employers can save $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year

Half-time telecommuters gain 11 days back per year – time they would have spent commuting

Absenteeism decrease of 31% with half-time telecommuting

Increase in productivity and morale

Increase in loyalty to employer

Organizational agility

Improved work-life balance

Forbes Challenges of Virtual Teams

Feelings of isolation

Lack of social interaction

Low levels of trust

Miscommunication and cultural clashes

Loss of team spirit

As GWA notes, it is only “well-executed programs” that can help employers achieve the desired benefits.

The question for today’s employers is this: Are you ready to transition from a face-to-face model to a virtual one? To help answer that question, consider the following:

Working virtually means more than taking a laptop home – it requires a culture change that embraces digital workflow and communications tools that maximize productivity and teamwork across distances.

Well-executed virtual teams take the time to learn communications strategies and techniques that build trust and camaraderie without ever being in the same room.

In short, simply offering flex work may get the employees you want in the door, but without investing in the skills and processes that make virtual teams perform, those same employees may not deliver the results you expect or stick around for long.

A great way to set your virtual teams up for success start is with an assessment from Virtual Team Builders. Your business can thrive in a virtual, telecommuting world – and we can help.

(Toronto – June 7, 2017) Virtual Team Builders is pleased to announce its new Lightning Pro webinars. Each Lightning Pro webinar specifically targets a specific obstacle to productivity experienced by teams where one or more members work remotely.

The Gartner Group has shown that 50% of virtual teams fail because they do not understand the challenges of working virtually. Virtual teams experience unique challenges that co-located teams do not, resulting in poor collaboration, difficulty achieving and maintaining trust, and role ambiguity – all counter-productive to business goals and success. In fact, teams begin to experience these obstacles when separated by as little as 90 feet.

Virtual Team Builders’ Lightning Pro webinars provide easily accessible, instantly applicable skills and knowledge that your team can use immediately to drive sustainable team performance and productivity. There are currently four Lightning Pro webinars:

Tips, Tricks & Troubleshooting for Skype for Business

Skype is more than a chat tool – in this session, learn how to use the most common features of Skype to promote interactivity and collaboration in your team’s Skype sessions

Advanced Skype for Business

Learn the advanced functionality of Skype to take your team’s productivity to the next level

SharePoint for Virtual Teams

Realize the full potential of SharePoint in your virtual team to slash email volume, streamline team discussions, increase collaboration, maintain file security, and organize projects from end to end

Jumpstart Your Online Training

Change the way you train – virtual training presents very different challenges than traditional classrooms, and this course will teach you high-impact online exercises that will help build engagement and sustainable learning outcomes

“These Lightning Pro webinars address a critical need for modern businesses: providing their dispersed workforce with the skills and knowledge that virtual teams need to succeed,” says Claire Sookman, Founder and President of Virtual Team Builders. “These webinars set virtual teams up for success, driving sustainable team performance and productivity, and we look forward to supporting virtual teams in achieving their goals.”

Virtual Team Builders is a training and consulting company that caters to corporations and teams who depend on effective virtual collaboration to succeed. Our training is targeted towards the unique challenges faced by teams operating in a virtual environment; challenges that are present whether members work 90 feet apart or 3000 miles apart.

About 40% of Microsoft’s 400,000 employees worldwide did not have a traditional office in 2007, the last year the company released this data. Recently, the tech giant announced that it was ending the benefit for many of those workers, aiming to transition them back to a traditional office environment.

“In many fields, such as software development and digital marketing, the nature of work is changing, which requires new ways of working,” said a statement from the company. “We are bringing small, self-directed agile teams in these fields together.”

I respectfully disagree – the nature of work is indeed changing, but very much in the opposite direction. A 2016 survey shows that more than half of corporate teams hail from multiple nations, up from just 41% in 2014 and 33% in 2012. In fact, up to 41% of corporate teams never meet in person.

So what drove Microsoft’s decision?

Failure to understand virtual work

According to the Gartner Group, 50% of virtual teams fail because they do not understand how to work virtually. Simply put, when interpersonal communication occurs mostly or entirely via electronic means, the skills and strategies we use to work productively and cohesively need to evolve. All too often, they don’t.

When companies say they dislike virtual teams because “the nature of work is changing,” to me it says they never quite cracked the code of doing so effectively in the workplace. Rather than solve the problem, they disrupt their workers’ lives and routines by embarking on expensive and complicated reorganizations.

I hope they make sure that in the new arrangement, team members sit no more than 90 feet away from one another. Any further, and they begin to exhibit the tendencies and behaviors of virtual teams anyway.

The way forward

Simply put, there is no reason – not one – why virtual teams cannot work as effectively and productively as co-located teams. Towards that end, Virtual Team Builders is pleased to launch a new resource for companies and teams that may be struggling, or even contemplating a drastic move such as Microsoft has.

Our Lightning Pro webinars are short, targeted, and laser-focused to address one commonly experienced challenge at a time. Affordable and convenient, each 45-minute webinar delivers instantly applicable skills and knowledge that your team can put into practice immediately. Current webinars are:

Tips, Tricks and Troubleshooting for Skype for Business

Advanced Skype for Business

SharePoint for Virtual Teams

Jumpstart Your Online Training

Virtual teams became common for a reason – they are convenient, flexible and easy to implement, making life more enjoyable for employees and less costly for businesses. Don’t let the challenges of virtual teamwork slow you down. Overcome them and achieve the results you know you can. Sign up for our Lightning Pro webinars to get started today!

The ability to work from anywhere may be one of the most attractive aspects of virtual teams, but it is also one of its most dangerous. More often than not, virtual teams experience disengagement and low morale because they have not adapted their communication style and practices to the virtual environment, giving employees with physical proximity the advantage over those working remotely.

In this case study, we will look at one consulting firm’s challenges with fostering a culture of inclusion for its remote and geographically dispersed employees, and how they implemented best practices to improve morale and productivity.

Client Background: Kristen King, Advocates for Human Potential, Inc.

For over seven years, Kristen has been a remote employee for AHP, a national consulting firm with offices in four states and close to 100 employees – 20 of whom work remotely in approximately a dozen more states. As the company grew larger and increasingly relied on virtual work, it became more and more challenging to foster a sense of inclusion and equality across offices and between remote and in-office staff.

This is an issue common to many virtual teams, and many of them simply accept feelings of dissatisfaction as part of the job.

“Some meetings – even company-wide meetings had people in the head office gather in their boardroom, and everyone else would log in through web conference either in groups or individually. – If you weren’t physically in the main meeting room, it was often really difficult to feel like you could fully participate.”

The Challenge: Different Location, Different Rules

For in-person communication, we use body language, eye contact, facial expressions and gestures. In a virtual environment, those tools are absent. When some team members are co-located and leverage those tools, it creates an immediate disadvantage for remote participants.

Often, teams will even mix-and-match participation models in the same meeting. Employees in the “primary” location sit in the boardroom while another team shares a single screen and speakerphone (with only one employee controlling the web conference tool), while others dial in individually. These setups lead to a variety of alienating consequences, including:

inability to determine who is attentive

difficulty hearing, without others realizing

whispering among co-located colleagues distracts remote participants

less participation by remote participants

“When some people are co-located and others aren’t, it’s like running a race with your ankles tied together People in one room are nodding at each other, while those dialing in are kind of forgotten about.”

The Solution: Level the Playing Field

Working with Virtual Team Builders, Kristen and the AHP team came to understand that if even one employee joins a meeting individually, then everybody does – even those who could easily share a speakerphone in the boardroom. AHP staff began to rely on web conferencing features like the raised hand, chat boxes, polls and workflow tools like SharePoint, with positive results including:

increased sense of inclusion

virtual communication that more closely replicated in-person dynamics

increased engagement among all employees

full participation

“When everyone shares, sees and provides feedback in the same way, it transforms the ‘us versus them’ dynamic. Remote employees stop feeling like an afterthought, and all contributions are equally valued. When we started to embrace a new form of virtual meetings where everyone participated the same way, all of a sudden people were saying, ‘This is so much better than before; now I really feel like part of the team.’”

Key Virtual Team Takeaway

By embracing the level playing field, including when delivering webinars to clients, Kristen and AHP quickly came to appreciate the value of ensuring that all participants have the same experience. Even where multiple colleagues share a single room, they increasingly lean towards the expectation that each participant logs into the meeting on their own computer to ensure equal access to the web conference tools.

“I’ve seen this philosophy penetrate some of our smaller teams in particular. Now, many use Skype every time, and they rely more on SharePoint documents for shared version control rather than one ‘document keeper.’ Externally, we really encourage our clients – presenters and participants – to join webinars individually, and we see the benefits there, too, in terms of quality, engagement and an overall enjoyable experience. Now that we know how well virtual teams can work, we’re never going back.”

Many companies start working virtually almost by accident. They grow larger, and employees begin to work farther apart – even as little as 50 feet between colleagues can change the way they communicate, and the skills they need to do so effectively. This skill gap is even more pronounced when colleagues are separated by entire floors, cities, or continents.

In this case study, we will look at one multinational company’s journey from inefficiency and frustration to productivity and success and it all starts with one word: awareness.

Client Background: Professional Learning Strategist

While developing an online educational platform for a multinational corporation, this Virtual Team Builders client (a professional learning strategist with extensive experience in the development of corporate training programs) recognized a pattern: colleagues who worked virtually had a consistent, pervading sense that they simply weren’t working effectively.

“They had started working virtually, but never really articulated the skills required to do so effectively. They just sort of assumed that people would start doing it, but all they had done was adopt inefficient technologies and implement them in inefficient ways. And nobody really knew.”

The Challenge: Lack of Virtual Awareness

Virtual meetings, held via Teleconference or Web Conference platforms such as WebEx and Skype For Business were particular struggles, featuring characteristics such as:

miscommunication

inefficiency

poor engagement

lack of participation

The strategist found that the most effective way to demonstrate the necessity of developing virtual teamwork and communication skills was simply to expose her client to them.

“We brought in Virtual Team Builders to assist on this project and you could see the ‘aha’ moment. It’s when people experienced a really good, really effective virtual meeting and improved communication between meetings. For the first time, they began to realize just how effective their team could be with the right skills in place.”

The Solution: Virtual Teamwork, Not Virtual Training

What this client recognized was that training in the virtual environment is quite different from working in it – and yet there are far more resources on the former than the latter. Communication tools that we take for granted in co-located teams such as face time and body language simply aren’t there in the virtual space, and few people know how to use the resources available to them to drive engagement.

“I’ve seen people who use WebEx but actively disable all but the bare minimum features. You can’t even use your webcam, the white board, annotation tools or use VoIP. All of these wonderful tools to provide face time and encourage participation and engagement, and people are too overwhelmed to explore them.”

Key Virtual Team Takeaway

By taking the time to develop their virtual team skills and knowledge, the learning strategist’s client experienced:

a significant increase in morale

productivity boost

less attrition

increased collaboration

To drive these results, the learning hub developed by the strategist included resources on working virtually, and an opportunity for people to talk about their specific challenges. Virtual Team Builders offered four one-hour sessions to align with the topics in the hub. These courses are now available to the public, and are accredited for Leadership Professional Development Units (PDUs).

Do you have a virtual team? Register for our upcoming courses (accredited for Leadership PDUs) to learn valuable virtual skills, or contact us to inquire about a virtual assessment of your team and it’s unique needs.

Did you know that if your team members are separated by as little as 90 feet, you have a virtual team? Physical separation between team members can lead to challenges that teams working in closer proximity simply don’t face.

Before we share some our favorite icebreakers, I am going to get on my soapbox and tell you that icebreakers are only the tip of the iceberg. Icebreakers alone do not build long-term, sustainable relationships. Building relationships is an ongoing process that requires time, attention, authenticity and trust.

That said, icebreakers do play a role in building relationships, but different ones serve different purposes for different teams. Ask yourself, “Exactly what kind of ice needs to be broken?” Here are the top five icebreaker tips you need to know for your virtual team:

1. Sharing is bonding

We’ve all been in a web conference with a group of faceless voices. Who exactly is everyone speaking to? What do they know about each other? If you are bringing people together who are working on a common goal the ice that you are melting may result in creating a bond.

Icebreaker Idea

It’s In The Mail is an activity for groups of up to 25. Before the meeting, team members should email a unique and unknown fact about themselves to the meeting facilitator. At the start of the session or during a lull in the meeting, the facilitator will pick an email to read and have the other attendees guess who the email belongs to.

2. Make time for face time

Even if you are bringing together like-minded people, the “ice” may simply reflect the fact that people have not yet met – and where teams are dispersed across different offices or continents, they may never do so in person.

Icebreaker Idea

Match Box is for groups up to 10 people. Prior to the meeting, create a slide with everyone’s pictures and post the slide onto the whiteboard. Ensure that each picture is numbered.

Then match people’s voices to their faces. Choose one picture at a time and ask the team to guess who they think it is. You can use the raised hand feature, chat or by giving verbal responses.

3. Anticipate culture shock

If you are bringing together people of different backgrounds, cultures and outlooks within your virtual team then the “ice” may come from people’s perceptions of each other.

Icebreaker Idea

Metaphor Magic is for groups up to 10 people. Have your team members come up with a list of words or phrases that have different interpretations or meanings. Ask your team members to define what they think that word or phrase means.

4. Know your team

Teams have different needs and preferences. Some teams may gravitate towards “fun” activities while others may be more inclined to link the activity to a purpose such as brainstorming or problem solving. Remember to personalize the activity for the needs of your virtual team.

5. Use the tools available to you

Web conferencing platforms enable your team members to express themselves and collaborate in new and creative ways, but many teams never use anything but the basic conference call functionality. Leverage interactive tools such as white boards, paired chat, the raised hand feature and polling to give everyone a variety of ways to engage with one another.

Interested in learning more about icebreakers for your virtual team? Register for our free webinarBuilding Relationships at a Distance for detailed advice and best practices, and get the most out of your virtual team. For a deeper dive, purchase the informative book Across the Hall, Around the World: Teambuilding Tips for Distributed Business from the Virtual Team Builders marketplace.

DID YOU KNOW?

ABOUT US

Virtual Team Builders is a training and consulting company that caters to corporations and teams who depend on effective virtual collaboration to succeed. Our training is targeted towards the unique challenges faced by teams operating in a virtual environment; challenges that are present whether members work 90 feet apart or 3000 miles apart.